Dr Alan Barnard (21 Oct 1932 - 11 Sep 2022)

In memory of dearly loved Alan Barnard. Alan died on 11th September 2022 four days after a stroke from which he never really rallied. Alan had five children. Karen, Michael, Grahame and Emma from a previous marriage, and Anne with Linda, his wife of just on fifty years. He was supportive of all his children and derived much pleasure from Emma’s recent wedding to Simon.

Alan was very clever, but he was also extremely practical; exactly the combination needed in a good, laboratory based, Microbiologist, which is what he was. Apart from a spell in Iraq, called up to the RAF medical corp at the time of Suez, Alan spent almost all his professional working life in the Public Health Laboratory Service. He provided data for ‘Report 71’, which laid down the UK Standard for Drinking Water and worked closely with Southend and Anglia Water on monitoring the Blue Flag scheme for clean beaches.

After that he became involved in and was instrumental in development of the method for laboratory detection of the causative bacterium of Legionnaire's Disease. In the early 80’s, this was very difficult to detect.

Alan’s Master and Doctorate degrees both dealt with aspects of the immune response to viral infections, so he was greatly interested to read any published data on Coronavirus - COVID 19.

Over the years Alan and Linda visited all sorts of places; Iraq, Canada, the Holy Land, most of Europe and the Baltic States, Jordan and Egypt and a few more. Cruises were favourites; we went to St Petersburg on one of these…..

Alan liked boats. We had a Mirror dinghy first, then a sea going sail cabin cruiser and finally a river cabin motor cruiser, but what Alan really liked was making things work! He would sometimes build models, not because he liked building models, but because he liked making anything fit together properly. This was his practical side. So he re-wired our house, fitting lots of extra sockets. He opened up and lined eaves spaces to make cupboards. He was a competent plumber… Alan could turn his hand to most things. In 2020 he and Linda made face masks together.

We listened to jazz - Dizzy Gillespie - and musicals, enjoyed our garden, seasides and our friends and grumbled together about the quality of what was available on television.

A man of few words, he was a deep thinker, a committed Christian and possessed of a dry and quirky sense of humour. He is dearly loved and very much missed.